I taped out the shower curtain onto the kitchen floor with some packing tape and then set about drawing on it with a black magic marker. The kids were right there while I was setting this up, so the drawing of the village layout was done whilst they were all giving input on what buildings we needed and where and i didn't have the time to look for and print out the cool photos and logos that were used in the original shower curtain play mat I saw.

I taped two sharpies to opposite sides of an old juice bottle, so I could use the contraption to quickly draw roads that were an even width. by the time I'd drawn half the village, the

kids had already started colouring it, so we kind of worked together and around each other with some kids colouring and some telling me what i needed to draw next on the map. There's only one photo of the project half done, because I had to keep drawing to keep up with the kid's requests for more roads and buildings!

You'll notice from the image of the finished play mat towards the bottom of this post that it's a bit of a weird town plan with roads going to odd places, but that's what happens when you are crawling around on the floor inbetween six kids that are four years old and younger and being directed by them! I resisted the urge to put in a couple of roundabouts for fear of confusing the American children :D, but as one of my mates pointed out to me, by doing this I have doomed another generation of Americans to repeat Chevy Chase's European vacation mistakes.because of the texture of the shower curtain (actually the packaging said it was a shower curtain liner?) it meant that we could colour it with crayons as well as perminent marker pens. The kids spent a long time colouring and when some of them got bored of colouring, we got the cars out to go on it, while others carried on colouring. One of the two year olds decided that the gas station/ grocery store needed some stock and went to get a basket of play food to pile up on top of it.

Last of all I got out a pack of traffic sign foam stickers from the dollar store and the kids kind of figured out where they should go on the roads. I left it taped to the floor overnight and my girls got up in the morning and carried on colouring it.

I have another shower curtain liner from the dollar store and the plan for the next floor map adventure is to spend an evening drawing a map of San francisco with all the famous landmarks on it, so the kids can colour it in and drive thier toy vehicles around all the places they know.

Maybe after we have done that I will do a map of Swindon to keep Duncan Happy ;)

54 comments:

This is awesome! I knew there was a reason I kept a shower curtain liner last week, that I could have thrown away. Thanks for the idea, and I will check out your links also. Great blog- lots of inspiration! :)-Maritza

Note to Duncan - we stayed in Swindon in order to visit Stonehenge. Almost didn't make it back out of Swindon due to the incomprehensible roundabouts. We inevitably got lost. I think you should have a gold star on your driving license for attaining it in the midst of Swindon's roundabout madness!!

This looks fantastic and a lot of fun!But, we do have roundabouts in the States! I've seen them in Manhattan, KS, Savannah, GA and Mount Holly, NJ. If you want for confusing traffic you'd have to include jug handles which I think can only be found in New Jersey. Talk about confusing!

You'll be happy to know roundabouts are popping up all over the States! My town of Iowa City has at least 4 that I know of, mostly small one lane ones. And NJ has some very large ones, worthy of downtown London with 4-6 lanes.

This project is fantastic, I have my 5 year old home with me for the first time this summer, and she will love to create her own country map.

I am so excited to get these instruction to make a play mat. This is easy and affordable to make. I run a home daycare and have a little boy who loves playing with cars. If anybody has more ideas, please post them.

Hi- Just found out that you linked my idea of Shower Curtain Playmat :) I like the things you added too-like using the Sharpies to mark the road. We play with ours all the time- in fact, I need to make a new one :) Thanks for linking me and giving me credit :)

Yes, we do have roundabouts in the states. In our area I think someone got a grant to put them in or something....we went from none, to 9 that I know of. They are surging in popularity, and so are the complaints I hear about how confusing they are! lol

I love this. My little ones have all out grown this kind of play, but I am going to pass this idea on to my friends who still have young kids. By the way, we do have in the U.S. what your refer to as roundabouts. We call them traffic circles here in Michigan. Thank you for the idea.

This is a brilliant idea. It will keep the kids busy for hours during these cold winter days. I would love for you to share this post on my linky party, my readers will LOVE this idea...http://www.fivelittlechefs.com/2013/01/fantastic-thursday-27.html

I'm wondering.... has anyone tried dry erase markers on this. I was thinking of using sharpies to draw a town and roads. But giving the kids dry erase markers so that it can be wiped down and used another day. I was curious if dry erase would stay easily. Awesome idea!

This is brilliant. I would have gone crazy over this as a kid - there was a big book I'd get out from the library ALL. THE. TIME. that had roads in it for little cars to drive on. Drove my mother crazy - can't you can any other books out, kid? Haha.

I'm definitely making this for my nephews, and someday when my son is bigger I'll make him one, too. Such a great idea!

Sooo, I went out and picked up a shower curtain liner at the dollar store, and tested out a small corner of it with a Sharpie marker. An hour or so later, I rubbed my fingers against it to see if it stayed on okay, but the marker was coming off onto my fingers - not cool for if kids are crawling around on it! Am I missing something?

Found you on pinterest and I LOVE this idea!!!! :) I'm sharing a link to it on something I'm posting tomorrow called The Absolute BEST (indoor) Summer-Fun Ideas for Kids! Would love for you to stop by and check it out :) it will go live midnight tonight on http://beautythroughimperfection.com/ <3 Paula

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